Award-Winning Palestinian Journalist Banned From TikTok After Trump-Backed Investor Takeover [View all]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/tiktok-bans-palestinian-journalist

Award-Winning Palestinian Journalist Banned From TikTok After Trump-Backed Investor Takeover

The ban of journalist Bisan Owda comes amid an alleged wave of censorship after the platform was taken over by a clique of Trump-aligned investors, including the pro-Israel megadonor Larry Ellison.

STEPHEN PRAGER
Jan 29, 2026

Bisan Owda is still alive, but not on TikTok.

The award-winning Palestinian journalist and filmmaker found that her social media account had been suddenly terminated days ago, as part of an alleged wave of censorship following the platform’s formal takeover by American investors last Thursday.

“TikTok deleted my account. I had 1.4 million followers there, and I have been building that platform for four years,” the 28-year-old Owda said in a video posted to her other social media accounts on Wednesday, just days after TikTok’s new owners assumed control.

“I expected that it would be restricted,” she said, “not banned forever.”

Owda had achieved a massive following for her daily vlogs documenting life amid Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. She showed herself constantly on the move, one of the nearly 2 million residents in the strip forcibly displaced by the military onslaught, and gave viewers a firsthand account of Israel’s attacks on hospitals, its leveling of neighborhoods, and its assassinations of journalists.

Each of them began with the signature phrase: “It’s Bisan from Gaza, and I’m still alive.”

A documentary with that title, produced with the Al Jazeera media network, won multiple awards, including an Emmy in 2024 for news and documentary filmmaking.

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